Steam Linux Usage Drops During August

[vsteel]

Add me to the list of played a lot of games and spent a lot of time in linux and when I popped over to Windows to check something I got the survey. I wouln't put to much faith in the numbers.

[Bernard Swiss]

Huh? I don't think you understand how Linux software works. Yes there is a reason for it not to run. I spelled it out in my post. Read it again. Steam requires glibc 2.15 and RHEL uses 2.12. Steam flat out will not run on RHEL. Period. It has nothing to do with packaging.

As the first open source company to top $1 Billion in annual revenue, Red Hat is the biggest Linux vendor. It seems a foolish move on Valve's part to ignore such a large customer base. I'm curious how many percents of their Windows user statistics are actually Linux users running the Windows client via CrossOver (or wine).

Red Hat is in the servers and software services business, not the desktop business, and their market is entirely corporate; Not only does Red Hat have no interest in running Steam, neither does their customer base.

And that goes double for RHEL -- that's Red Hat's server distro. Their desktop version is RHED. And I wouldn't expect Steam to run on that, either. After all, the 'E' in RHEL and RHED stands for 'Enterprise'. Their top concerns are reliability, predictability and long support-life cycles. In fact, I'd wager that not running Steam is not only a deliberate decision, but is something that Red Hat and its paying customers both consider a positive benefit.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

I have AMD Radeon? HD6750M (it's a Samsung Series 7 laptop). I can install the Catalyst driver, but I want to allow switchable graphics so I can switch the Radeon off when I'm not running games.

But why you want to install Catalyst driver? You can switch discrete GPU with FOSS driver (via vgaswitcheroo; but in some next Linux kernel release discrete GPU will get disabled or enabled automatically) and use it for playing games (like this "DRI_PRIME=1 steam"). Of course you have to use some fresh Linux distribution that released in 2013 year (for DRI_PRIME). For additional performance install Mesa 9.2, search articles about "R600_DEBUG=sb" (will be enabled in Mesa 9.3 by default) and try to change CPU scaling_governor to performance.

[torsionbar28]

Nothing to do with being "old"??! LOLOLOL. - You sir, continue to make yourself look extremely stupid. Which is older glibc 2.12 or 2.15?? - if you agree that 2.15 is newer, then sorry 2.12 is an old release; thus it has EVERYTHING to do with RHEL shipping older S/W. You don't need to explain RHEL to me - I'm quite familiar thanks - they ship older S/W, period. ~ Again, RHEL isn't supported - YOU choose to run it at home and have expectations that are ridiculous. ie: this is entirely your own fault. Use a supported distro or wait for RHEL to be able to support S/W that requires > glibc 2.12... it's really that simple... It's just too bad to are too stubburn to grasp the obvious.

I'm sorry but you aren't qualified to continue participating in this. Please excuse yourself and leave the discussion to the adults. Every major Linux game runs on RHEL6 today... except for Steam. Xonotic, Open Arena, Urban Terror, etc. All of the CrossOver Windows games. Even the Unigine Heaven and Valley benchmarks. Steam is the only game product that is compiled in such a way that it excludes RHEL. Of course you probably don't understand any of this, so I'm done here.

Stop being an idiot. RHEL is an ENTERPRISE distro. Expecting it to run the latest games is stupid. No one (except you, apparently) even wants to run Steam on RHEL.

You have 3 choices:
1 - run a desktop distro
2 - manually hack RHEL to fit your needs (unsupported)
3 - STFU - or don't, and keep whining on here and we'll just ignore you

I don't expect Valve to support running on Windows 2012 Enterprise edition, either, just Windows XP, 7, and 8.

Windows 2013 is a server. Nobody expects to run games on a server. Your argument is a strawman; do some homework and learn about the differences between a server OS and a desktop OS - the are very different markets. RHEL Desktop is a desktop product. RHEL Workstation is a desktop product. Comparing them to Windows *server* is idiotic.

Red Hat is in the servers and software services business, not the desktop business,

Do a little homework before you post. Are you really claiming that Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop is not a desktop product? Or that Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation is not a desktop product? Huh?

[ninez]

I'm sorry but you aren't qualified to continue participating in this. Please excuse yourself and leave the discussion to the adults. Every major Linux game runs on RHEL6 today... except for Steam. Xonotic, Open Arena, Urban Terror, etc. All of the CrossOver Windows games. Even the Unigine Heaven and Valley benchmarks. Steam is the only game product that is compiled in such a way that it excludes RHEL. Of course you probably don't understand any of this, so I'm done here.

I understand just fine. The argument you are presenting is completely invalid; Valve Steam (native) client, unlike almost all of the others that you just mentioned only appeared on Linux somewhat recently (many of your examples existed pre-glibc 2.12, by quite a bit); More specifically they introduced the native client in Ubuntu 12.04). *ie: They did not develop, test/QA, etc their Linux client using the outdated versions of S/W shipped on your platform* <or 10.10 which is comparable to RHEL in age of things like glibc and note: Steam Client doesn't run on that either> and another important point is it isn't open source software; unlike many that you just mentioned...and that is *obvious* without even thinking about for more than 2 seconds (ie: you can't expect the same portability)... You are comparing apples to oranges. In either of those cases. Your enitre argument is utterly worthless... You seem to expect them to target your platform (or ancient S/W versions), but they targeted a modern Ubuntu release; first and foremost... It was left to packagers in other distributions to package steam (after Valve re-worked the license for distribution purposes, IIRC). Older distribution releases that didn't meet the requirements were left out for good reason. Again, you are choosing to use an unsupported platform, so it's your own fault...get over it, or install a supported Distribution.

[sarmad]

But why you want to install Catalyst driver? You can switch discrete GPU with FOSS driver (via vgaswitcheroo; but in some next Linux kernel release discrete GPU will get disabled or enabled automatically) and use it for playing games (like this "DRI_PRIME=1 steam"). Of course you have to use some fresh Linux distribution that released in 2013 year (for DRI_PRIME). For additional performance install Mesa 9.2, search articles about "R600_DEBUG=sb" (will be enabled in Mesa 9.3 by default) and try to change CPU scaling_governor to performance.

I wanted the Catalyst driver because from the benchmarks it's still leaps and bounds faster than the FOSS driver. The FOSS driver was also using a lot of CPU, causing the fan to be pretty much always on and causing battery drainage (battery down from 4 hours to 2 hours!). But I've never heard of this DRI_PRIME thing. I'll give that a try and see if that makes a difference. Thanks for the recommendation.

[torsionbar28]

I understand just fine. The argument you are presenting is completely invalid; Valve Steam (native) client, unlike almost all of the others that you just mentioned only appeared on Linux somewhat recently (many of your examples existed pre-glibc 2.12, by quite a bit); More specifically they introduced the native client in Ubuntu 12.04). *ie: They did not develop, test/QA, etc their Linux client using the outdated versions of S/W shipped on your platform* <or 10.10 which is comparable to RHEL in age of things like glibc and note: Steam Client doesn't run on that either> and another important point is it isn't open source software; unlike many that you just mentioned...and that is *obvious* without even thinking about for more than 2 seconds (ie: you can't expect the same portability)... You are comparing apples to oranges. In either of those cases. Your enitre argument is utterly worthless... You seem to expect them to target your platform (or ancient S/W versions), but they targeted a modern Ubuntu release; first and foremost... It was left to packagers in other distributions to package steam (after Valve re-worked the license for distribution purposes, IIRC). Older distribution releases that didn't meet the requirements were left out for good reason. Again, you are choosing to use an unsupported platform, so it's your own fault...get over it, or install a supported Distribution.

This makes about as much sense as a Windows game developer writing software that only works on Windows 8. Running Windows 7? Too bad, that's ancient crap, nobody should be running that any more.

Your timeline makes no sense either. RHEL6 was released in 2010. Valve didn't announce the Steam for Linux effort until July 2012, and didn't release it until Feb 2013. Ergo, I could not have chosen to run an unsupported-by-valve platform, since Steam for Linux did not exist yet when I chose RHEL6. RHEL6 came first, by a long ways.

Open source vs. closed source is not relevant here, not sure why you would even mention that. Java, Flash Player, VMware, AMD/Nvidia proprietary drivers, Google Chrome, Opera browser, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc. are all closed source desktop products, yet they all work fine on RHEL. Steam is the only commercial Linux software product that I'm aware of, that won't run on RHEL6. That it is the only one is significant, and makes it the outlier, even if you choose to ignore that fact.

[smitty3268]

Windows 2013 is a server. Nobody expects to run games on a server. Your argument is a strawman; do some homework and learn about the differences between a server OS and a desktop OS - the are very different markets. RHEL Desktop is a desktop product. RHEL Workstation is a desktop product. Comparing them to Windows *server* is idiotic.

It's a corporate product, that corporations are expected to buy. Not individual users.

The truth is that the vast majority of RHEL customers would be more interested in blocking Steam than getting it to run - so that their employees don't use it to screw around during the day when they should be working instead.

The fact that you don't see this says a lot about you, and not much about either Red Hat or Valve.

[ninez]

This makes about as much sense as a Windows game developer writing software that only works on Windows 8. Running Windows 7? Too bad, that's ancient crap, nobody should be running that any more.

No, it's more like running XP vs. 7 ... All of the most popular distros have EOL versions using comparable libs to what you are using in RHEL. ~ I own software that isn't compatible with winXP / is designed for win7 (but i run it in Wine) and i think that is a better comparison...

Your timeline makes no sense either. RHEL6 was released in 2010. Valve didn't announce the Steam for Linux effort until July 2012, and didn't release it until Feb 2013. Ergo, I could not have chosen to run an unsupported-by-valve platform, since Steam for Linux did not exist yet when I chose RHEL6. RHEL6 came first, by a long ways.

A timeline is of no consequence here - you are being intellectually dishonest here. When i say you have "chosen:" what i am saying is that you full well know Steam isn't supported and are continuing to whine and bitch about it, when you could just as easily "choose" to run Steam in a Supported distro.... Why did you even bring this up??? it's completely irrelevant.

Open source vs. closed source is not relevant here, not sure why you would even mention that. Java, Flash Player, VMware, AMD/Nvidia proprietary drivers, Google Chrome, Opera browser, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc. are all closed source desktop products, yet they all work fine on RHEL. Steam is the only commercial Linux software product that I'm aware of, that won't run on RHEL6. That it is the only one is significant, and makes it the outlier, even if you choose to ignore that fact.

OSS is relevant and i was clear as to why; having source code means that some bug and/or issues could have been solved / patched or whatever in a situation where people could have played with XYZ porogram's source code on XYZ unsupported distro; aka: RHEL in this case.. Hence, why i mentioned that you "can't expect the same portability" plus <and i am having to repeat myself, since you clearly did not take what i wrote previously into account> all of the above mentioned apps have existed in linux for a long time and have been developed / tested against gliblc 2.12. Steam is New and choose a support path/target that being Ubuntu 12.04+ or glibc+ (and whatever other test/QA'd against S/W/libs/etc)... please stop talking if you aren't even going to see proposing this argument is pointless; I've already covered this in my last post.

[johnc]

Can't we all just get along...?